After hearding her sarcastic words he was angered. But he was not attacked first as he knew silence was everything. The answere of everything. Instead of him, she lifted both arms.

The ground cracked behind her as dozens of graves tore open. The bones of plague victims, executed rebels, and nameless skeletons rose in fragments. They spiraled around her like a vortex.

She pointed.

The bones shaped into a serrated scythe longer than her height. Its edge shimmered with soulfire.

Ezrakel did not retreat.

He lifted his censer and slammed it once against his own chest.

BOOM.

A pulse of pure decay rolled outward. The ground turned black. Stone dissolved. Color faded.

Selnar's bones cracked. Then new bones grew again.

She moved.

She swung the scythe.

Ezrakel met her with his censer, now wrapped in chains of bones.

The weapons collided.

A shockwave exploded from the clash. All sound vanished. Even the echoes of the dead went mute.

Time felt slower. Only movement remained.

Selnar twisted, her feet never touching ground. The scythe danced, reformed, reshaped mid-swing. It became a sword, a knife, a crescent blade.

Ezrakel spun the censer like a flail, every strike exhaling prayers from forgotten funeral rites. Each prayer formed a curse, and each curse wrapped around Selnar's weapons, trying to rot them mid-air.

Her bones cracked but regenerated.

She raised her left hand, and a massive skull formed above them one with three eyes and horns.

The skull bit downward.

Ezrakel held his palm up.

A coffin of black stone erupted from the ground, blocking the bite.

The skull shattered. The coffin cracked.

He opened it and stepped through, appearing behind her in silence.

Selnar turned just in time to meet his gaze.

Ezrakel touched her forehead with two fingers.

A glyph of final prayer formed there. A golden brand.

"You are not beyond burial."

But Selnar smiled faintly.

" let's see."

The bones around her lit up.

Like dead answered.

The glyph on Selnar's forehead burned.

Golden light pulsed through her veins, trying to increase the flow of mana in her body. Ezrakel's mark worked like a counterattack. Each second, it gave him more powers. To counter her footsteps. Her breath. Her powers.

He raised the censer again. The smoke thickened. It poured outward, not like a mist but like a tide. From it rose gravewalkers faceless, hunched things bound in chains of scripture. They dragged rusted bells and whispered half-words, each one a piece of a forgotten funeral.

Selnar knelt.

Her scythe fell apart.

Bones cracked, weakened by the glyph.

Ezrakel took a step forward. "You wield the archive. But I am the seal. Every story ends with a grave."

He laughed. Then he lifted his hand. The sky above split into the shape of a cathedral window, and through it fell lightless ash. It gathered behind him, forming a towering cross of bone, fused from condemned saints and traitor priests. The cross pulsed. At its center glowed the names of every death Ezrakel had buried.

He spoke one word.

"End."

But Selnar whispered back.

"Let's end."

Her fingers moved weakly, forming a shape in the dust.

A letter.

A name.

One not in his archive.

Her own.

Her bones responded. She noticed everything that he was completely dependent on that censor.

One by one, the bones orbiting her shattered but not in death. They released remnants. Memories. Lives. Final words. Every one of them a death that destiny had failed to bury. Lost children. Murdered lovers. Executed innocents. A skeletons.

They had never reached the priest's grave.

They were never prayed for.

Selnar stood.

Behind her, those forgotten souls traped in skeletons took shape wraiths of grief and rage. They surged toward Ezrakel. His gravewalkers tried to hold them back, but the unburied dead passed through them like light through glass.

They reached him.

They screamed.

Not words, but raw memory. The kind he had no scripture for. The kind no censer could cleanse.

Ezrakel stumbled. The glyph on Selnar's forehead flickered, then cracked. She tore it away with one sharp motion.

Her scythe reformed in her grip. Larger now.

And she moved.

Ezrakel swung his censer, but his arm was slower.

Selnar's blade tore through his shoulder.

Bones shattered. Gold runes bled light.

He dropped the censer.

Selnar caught it.

And crushed it in her palm.

The smoke ended.

Ezrakel fell to one knee, his skull cracked. He looked up at her with hollow sockets.

"Why? What is the reason of my end..."

"False power," Selnar said. "You have no powers. You are completely reply on that censor. I don't know how you became a general of that Vestige's. You don't deserve it. You are too weak. That girl was powerful than you."

She raised the scythe once more.

And struck.

Ezrakel's body fell apart, not like a broken statue, but like a book burning from the inside.

The gold runes faded.

His name vanished from the dead's whispers.

And the cross behind him collapsed into dust.

★★★

Selnar stood alone, her cloak torn, her hands bleeding, her archive still orbiting.

A single new bone floated up.

It was small.

A knuckle.

Ezrakel's.

She watched it for a moment. Then nodded.

A new death.

A new bone. Whenever she killed someone, in her body new bone appeared.

★★★

During this entire battle so many battles continued. Among them we saw a battle of Old Lark. Like others his opponent was one general's servant.

We saw that surroundings near of him was a crater of shattered mountains and smoking stone.

Old Lark stood hunched, wheezing, his staff bent like a snapped branch. His cloak looked like it had been stitched from curtains stolen off a poor man's window. But he grinned.

Across from him stood a Vestige. Not from the general's. This one was made of glinting black metal, shaped like a knight, but hollow inside. No eyes. No mouth. Just fire leaking from the cracks in its armor. A servent of one general.

It didn't wait.

The Vestige lunged, shoulder-first. The ground shattered under its charge.

Lark rolled to the side, dust flying. He laughed, even as a piece of his staff snapped off from the impact.

The Vestige turned. Its hands split open into hooked blades, spinning like saws.

"You're interesting," Lark said. "Let's see what tricks you have."

The Vestige roared. A flaming lance burst from its chest and shot toward Lark.

Lark tapped the ground with his bare foot.

Time buckled.

He wasn't there.

The lance struck a mountain behind, exploding into a geyser of molten shards.

Lark appeared above, riding a slab of rock like a floating surfboard. He opened his mana space pocket and took a glass vial.

Then he dropped a glass vial.

It hit the Vestige's helmet and burst into acid. Metal hissed and peeled back.

The Vestige grabbed its own head and screamed.

Lark whistled.

"Not bad. Let's make it interesting."

He snapped his fingers.

The air around the Vestige froze. Ice spiraled up its legs, locking its joints.

Then Lark landed, right in front of it, and slammed his staff into the creature's knee.

A crunch.

The leg bent backward.

The Vestige fell.

It thrashed, stabbing wild arcs through the air.

Lark ducked low, swiped a curved dagger from inside his sleeve, and carved a glowing sigil across the metal chestplate.

The sigil pulsed.

Tick.

Tick.

Boom.

A controlled blast erupted outward, flinging the Vestige through the ruins.

It rolled and scraped to a stop, its armor smoking, half its helm gone.

But it didn't stay down.

It dragged itself upright, roaring louder, now crackling with red energy. Its body rebuilt itself from debris, pulling in nearby metal to reinforce its frame.

Lark sighed. "Always the stubborn ones."

The Vestige charged again, faster.

Lark planted his foot.

Time shimmered beneath him in rings.

The Vestige stabbed forward.

Lark caught the blade with his bare hand. Blood poured down his wrist.

Then he grinned.

"You're five seconds too late."

Behind the Vestige, five versions of Lark stepped out of thin air.

Each one held a weapon.

A spear.

A whip.

A hammer.

A short sword.

And one held the same bent staff.

They attacked at once.

Steel rang.

Metal dented.

The Vestige swung wildly, taking out one clone. But the hammer smashed its side. The whip coiled around its arm and yanked. The sword pierced its back.

Then the spear was driven clean through its chest.

The real Lark kicked it in the head.

The Vestige dropped to one knee, sparks flying.

Lark stepped in front of it, pressing the broken end of his staff against the thing's core.

"Good fight. But I hate repeating myself."

He whispered a number.

"Zero."

The core cracked.

Time stopped.

And the Vestige burst like glass dropped from a sky.

Pieces flew in every direction.

Only one was left: a single melted bolt.

Lark picked it up, then turned and limped away, giggling again.

"Bring the next one," he said. "This old dog has plenty more bones to break."

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